Treasure Box Page 0,33

from the great ancient trees that surrounded it, but could never have hidden it in the daylight, for it rose five rambling stories above a sweeping front porch with a stairway surely as wide and high as a Greek temple.

"How many hundreds of people live here?" asked Quentin in awe.

"In its heyday, there were probably half a dozen families. Nobody moved away. We were such a tightknit clan back then." She laughed. "Money requires a big house, anyway, Tin. No matter how many people actually live there. You're the only one who doesn't understand that."

A silent servant stood waiting for them, a tall thin man, the cliche of a butler. He wore only a lightweight jacket but didn't seem bothered by the cold.

"How did he know we were coming?" asked Quentin.

"I'm sure someone noticed the lights coming up the lane."

Quentin wasn't quite sure what the servant was there for, since he didn't open their car doors or help them get their luggage out of the car - the driver did all that. Quentin tipped the driver and sent him off. The tires crackled in the gravel and the engine sounded like a windstorm as the car swept away, its taillights streaking the snow with red.

"Much more Christmasy than anything in California," said Quentin.

"It doesn't feel Christmasy to me," said Madeleine. "It feels oppressive."

"Welcome home, Miss Cryer," said the servant softly.

"You see?" said Madeleine. "They know I'm Mrs. Fears now."

"Beg your pardon," said the servant. "Habit of decades."

The servant led them up the stairs. He must have come out of the house another way, since theirs were the first feet to break the crust of snow on the steps. Quentin carried his own bags; the servant was carrying Madeleine's. Was this a sign of things to come? Madeleine belonged here, and Quentin was barely tolerated? Or maybe if Quentin had simply left his bags, the servant would have come back down and picked them up later. He had no idea, really, how the whole business with servants worked. And from what Madeleine said, it might all be different here anyway. Her family followed its own rules.

Which was all the more apparent when not a soul from the household came to greet them. They were led up silent, empty stairs to a room on the third floor - a huge room, well furnished, but lighted by only two lamps with cloth cords that plugged into ancient two-prong outlets. "I guess nobody's brought this old place up to code," said Quentin.

The servant looked at him as if he were a newly noticed crack in the plaster, and then left the two of them in their oversized but ancient bedroom.

"Well, Mad, is there a bathroom attached to this room or do we wander down a hall?"

She laughed. "There's a bathroom attached to all the rooms now - somebody went on a modernizing kick back in the 1920s. When they put in the electricity they also put in the plumbing. But you can see up on that wall how the moldings aren't exactly right. That's because the wall didn't used to be here. This is a false wall added on so they could fit in two bathrooms, ours and the one attached to the next bedroom over." She showed him in to the quaint old bathroom, with a clawfoot tub and a toilet with the tank high on the wall. And a pull chain.

"Oh, really," said Quentin. "Surely this was old-fashioned even in the twenties."

"My family cultivates an air of eccentricity."

"I feel like we've walked into the castle of the beast."

She raised an eyebrow. "I know the place smells musty, but - "

"In the story of Beauty and the Beast. How she lived there but never met a soul for the longest time."

"Oh, they're all in bed."

"It's not that late."

"I didn't say they were asleep. The house keeps Grandmother's schedule. Quiet time begins right after supper. Everybody to their bedrooms. Including arriving guests. We can go on down to the kitchen and make sandwiches, though. As long as we don't slide down the banisters or shout through the halls. Everybody will stay out of our way until tomorrow."

"Who's everybody?"

"How do I know till I've taken inventory in the morning?"

So they divided up the drawers and closet space and unpacked and changed out of their traveling clothes into pajamas and bathrobes and padded downstairs in slippers to the basement kitchen. "This must be convenient for the servants," said Quentin.

"That's what dumbwaiters are for," said Madeleine. "It's